


Doctor Who! In An Adventure (Sort Of) With Pirates!

by Darjeweling



Category: Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Alcohol, Drunk Doctor, Eighth Doctor Adventures, Friendship, Gen, Humour, drunken platonic snuggling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 21:55:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2084541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darjeweling/pseuds/Darjeweling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's only one thing to do when marooned on a desert island with its own cache of rum... and whatever the Doctor thinks, it isn't Scrabble or tiddlywinks.</p><p>Both happen, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doctor Who! In An Adventure (Sort Of) With Pirates!

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't know a thing about Scrabble conventions.

“I am _not_ ,” the Doctor repeats, in what Lucie Miller is sure he thinks is an indisputable tone of finality, “ _drunk_. I am a Time Lord, and I am a gentleman, and I will have you know that I once drank the villainous advisor of your Charles I _underneath the table_ , saving, I might add, your kingdom from a most certain and terribly unpleasant end.”

“And which body was that in, Doctor?” Lucie Miller hiccoughs happily, in between another swig. “Has this one been put to the test yet? Had its MOT, been down to the service station and all that?”

“That’s _Captain_ , if you would be so kind, Miss Miller: I am the _captain_ of the TARDIS, and as we are, after all, marooned on a desert island with no substance but rum to sustain us, I _think_ under such piratical circumstances that gives me the right to assert my correct title without further ado, wouldn’t you agree?”

Lucie holds up her bottle to chink with his. “Aye aye, Cap’n!”

Captain Doctor returns the chink and they take a swig each, bottles beyond grimacing at the sharp, sickly sweet spirit. God only knows what they did to make rum in this century, Lucie thinks. It’s a far cry from Captain Morgan’s, that’s for sure. Or even that unlabelled stuff you can get at Ziggy’s by Blackpool Pier, a fiver for trebles.

“Your move, Cap’n,” Lucie points with her drink at the slightly-soggy, travel-sized scrabble board before them, lying on a tilt on the soft sand. The words in the centre of the board are relatively straight; it’s only towards the edges that the little lettered squares get increasingly higgledy-piggledy.

“What?” the Doctor pushes himself up with a grunt. “But I just put down ‘ahoy.’”

“Well, I’ve just put down ‘yar’, so it’s your go now.”

“Nonononono, Lucie, Lucie, Lucie—”

And she thought he was bad for repetition sober. And the smartarse waving of the hands.

“—Lucie, _Lucie,_ ‘yar’ is not a word. It is, in _fact,_ an _onomatopoeia_ , meaning— nono wait, it’s not that, actually, it’s a… Well, whatever it is, it’s a colloquial noun at the very, _very_ most, and colloquialisms were banned in Scrabble by the Tabletop Board Games Convention in nineteen twenty-nine.”

Also, the patronising tone of voice. If she hit him, he wouldn’t remember it in the morning. Still, she’s got the metaphorical ace up her sleeve here — or rather the ‘q’s and ‘z’s and blanks. She’s untouchable.

“But, _but_ , Doctor—”

“ _Captain._ ”

“ _Captain_ Doctor…” Lucie beams at him brightly. “You’re forgetting something!”

He gives his companion a withering look that she delights in. “Pray tell, first mate Miller.” 

Lucie widens her smile.

“We’re in the seventeenth century! That convention thingy hasn’t happened yet! Ha ha!” She slaps her retracted ‘yar’ back down with a flourish of triumph. “Triple word score too, just in case  that had escaped your notice. They’re the red ones, right?”

“Triple—? And you wasted it with a three-letter word?”

“A three-letter word with a _y_ , mate, so that’s… um…”

“Eighteen, oh Lucie, that’s hardly worthy, that’s _shameful_. I taught you better than that, surely.”

“Well, it was _preempetitive_ , you see. So you couldn’t go there.”

“Oh, that’s right, is it?”

“Mm-hm.” Smug.

“So you won’t mind if I…?”

“What have you— oh no, oh _no_ , you wouldn’t!”

The Doctor’s gleeful laughter.

“That’s not—”

“Not fair, dear Lucie, dear _mate_?”

“Try not bloody _possible_! You can’t have more than seven letters on your stand thing at any one time!”

“Ah, not in Scrabble 4D, which was first beta’d on Vega in the year twenty-two forty- _four_ , if I recall correctly…”

“Well it’s not twenty-two bleeding forty-four, is it? And anyway you’re having me on, there’s no way you’re clear enough in the head to remember dates like that!”

“I think you’ll find, able seawoman Lucie, that I am _perfectly_ _capable_ of holding a bottle or two of Caribbean spirits, in fact I’ve never told you about the time with a voodoo witch doctor named—named—er—”

“Doc— ugh, _Captain_ , I’ll think _you’ll_ find that…” She squints. “‘…retremensitransitory,’ as well as being stupidly obviously made up, _doesn’t even fit on the board!_ ”

“Lucie, you wound me! Didn’t you pay attention to all those retremensive circuits I showed you, that time the neutron flux capacitor blew its fuse?”

“The retre-what? Doctor, everything in that blumming ship of yours is on its last legs, if you expect me to remember every time— oi! Don’t you go putting that down, that’s not a good enough answer you know! I still don’t believe you!”

But he’s not paying her any attention now; he’s too busy adding up the thrice-multiplied score for retremensithingy and, no doubt, extrapolating the board to include any double word or triple letter scores he might have accumulated too. He’s muttering under his breath; definitely drunk,  Lucie thinks: he’d normally have calculated the answer the moment the word so much as came to his head.

She leans forward.

“Not making you lose count if I yell like this, am I?” she yells.

“Not at all, you have such a delicate voice… And that comes to two hundred and eighty-four! Point seven two, but I hope you won’t mind that I rounded it up…”

“You _can’t_ round up in Scrabble, Doctor, and yes I _do_ mind if you’re a right cheating bastard—”

“ _Captain_ Doctor, ye scurvy sapiens!”

“Not anymore, Doctor, I’m mutinying, me, this is mut’ny! I hereby announce that I am taking command of this island and relinsquish—relishquish— _releasing_ _you_ of all powers as its leader until such an event as the return of the TARDIS occurs!” And with that, and with not the least amount of relish, she snatches from his head the silly, frond-woven sombrero he’s been working on since they arrived, and places it on her own. It slides over her eyes, but she shoves it back with dignity. “There, see? I’m captain now.”

The demoted Doctor sighs in apparent defeat, leaning back on his elbows. “Oh dear oh dear. I suppose that places you quite definitely in charge then?”

“Mm-hm. Queen Lucie now, me. _Captainess_ Lucie.” She nods firmly, then wishes she hadn’t as the beach sways.

“I tell you what,” her single crewman says, attempting to sit up, failing, then slumping on one arm as though he meant to do that all along, “I tell you _what_ , my Captain: on at least seven star systems that immediately come to mind, including Krokasmia, Elligor, Harth and Bermuda—”

“Bermuda’s not a star system you pillock, ’s’a triangle!”

“Yes it _is_ , Lucie, it’s the interstellar capital of the North Indies, now _as I was saying_ , in all of those star systems, Lucie, do you know what all of those star systems have in common? Hm?”

“Being made up by a drunken Time Lord on a scrap of beach in the middle of the Caribbean?”

“Being in agreement that the man with the biggest hat is king!” the Doctor beams at her, all rosy cheeks and boggling eyes, salt-swept hair standing on end.

“Joy of all joys.” Lucie takes another swig from her bottle. Where did all the rum go…? She must have spilt some. “Tell me something I don’t already know, seaman.”

“So, Captain Lucie, if you are agreeing that your wearing the big hat makes you king of the beach—”

“And the TARDIS!”

“—and the TARDIS, all right — then you must also agree that if I was to construct a bigger and better hat than your own—”

“Then as my subject and crew you would be obligated to surrender it to me, your super-wonderful Captainess and Queen?”

“Ah, no, _you_ will be obligated to subjugate yourself to my command and superiority. Do you agree?”

There were a lot of big words then. He may be in control of his tongue but Lucie’s is flopped like a beached fish between her teeth; a fish that’s jumped out of the woozy waters of her intoxicated brain to escape the fumes.

“Er… Sure?”

“A _ha_ then!”

“Oh for Chrissake, how did you—”

“I’m a fast knitter. See? Bigger and better than yours, now, if you wouldn’t mind…?”

It’s a stupidly good hat. No stray fronds like hers, no stringy bits. It looks more like origami than weaving. He must have made it when — when? Lucie doesn’t even know. Maybe he had it readymade in his fourth dimensional pockets. It sort of just appeared on his head.

“ _Fine_ , you’re the captain,” she says sulkily. She fumbles around for another bottle, digging her chilly feet out of the sand, but hears only empty clinks. “Where’sh all the rum gone?”

“To your poor liver, I’ve no doubt.” He beams at her, and it’s impossible to be even passably annoyed at him in that stupid hat. He’s even woven little _corks_ , the show-off. “Here.” The last quarter of his bottle is better than any olive branch, and Lucie gratefully accepts — and drinks. She can taste the salt of his lips around its rim, and runs her tongue around it.

Alone together on a white-sand beach, off their faces on top-class rum, huddling increasingly close in the surprising chill of the moonless sky… It’s a shame he’s such an old dad, really, or this wouldn’t be a half-bad end to a bloody wretched day. Swimming for her life in shark-infested waters in her best Converse? Not her idea of fun. The sunbathing and swimming after was all right, though she would have rather been spared the sight of the Doctor in question-marked boxer shorts.

But beggars can’t be choosers, and all that; she’s getting cold. She shuffles around the fire and, ignoring his fleeting complaints — “Get _off_ me, mangy cur, you’re all sandy!” — snuggles right into him, tucking the crown of her head under his chin and folding her legs across his. He’s so _warm._ And cuddly, too, once he stops resisting.

“Doctor?” she murmur fuzzily, after several minutes of only the pop of the green driftwood flames and the slap of the swash to focus consciousness on.

“Yes?”

“Er, do you think she’ll eventually come back for us? You know. The TARDIS?”

“Oh, she came back ages ago; she’s over there in the palms.”

“Hungh? You what?”

“Yes… A rather clever move on my part, I thought: I was almost certain things would turn sour for us in the event of Captain Turner’s usurping, so I set for her to home in on my heartbeats in the event of us not returning in twenty-four hours.” Lucie feels his smug smile in her hair. “As it was I’m actually rather pleased we had the chance to walk the plank, aren’t you? Never gets old, that one. Nothing says adventure quite like a cutlass to the back and the open ocean to the front.”

“So let me get this straight: we’ve been sat here for the past day doing nothing but lounging around on this godforsaken beach, drinking rum, playing scrabble and I Spy and tiddlywotsits, and she’s been here the whole time?”

The Doctor raises a sly brow.

“Are you complaining, first mate Miller?”

Lucie contemplates the last two fingers of their shared rum, shrugs, then downs it. She has to tilt her head a way back to reach the last drop and it’s not a good idea — once her head hits the sand, for the life of her she can’t lift it back up. She soon relaxes, like she intended to lie down all along, and gazes up at the stars beyond the crackling firelight.

“Suppose it’s been all right, really,” she says — then passes out.


End file.
